Mafia II: Definitive Edition (PlayStation 4) review "It might be paint-by-numbers, but at least I was painting with bullets!"

Mafia: Definitive Edition is the 2020 remake of a 2002 sandbox game that provides a reasonably good time, but also makes one wonder just why it seems like every game that had any sort of following at any point in time winds up getting a new version dumped onto the market nowadays. I mean, is creativity in such decline that people automatically default to “Let’s put out our old hits again!” the instant money needs to be made?

Don’t get me wrong; I had fun playing through the saga of Tommy Angelo — it’s just that this game is a poor man’s Grand Theft Auto that gives you an involving main story and very little else to do other than hunt down a wide variety of collectibles. Which isn’t exactly a compelling reason to make me want to break from the plot in order to casually explore the city of Lost Heaven. Mafia is a textbook example of getting in, getting through and getting out. Pure junk food in gaming form.

Tommy is a taxi driver in Lost Heaven. Fortunately for any of us playing this game, that ever-so-thrilling existence undergoes major changes when a pair of gun-toting mobsters hijack him and force him to be their getaway driver. Since Tommy’s occupation makes him a natural at driving like a maniac, he’s able to take Sam and Paulie to safety and, just that like, this little chapter of his life comes to a close.

Well, for a little while, at least. Turns out Sam and Paulie are members of the Salieri crime family and they were on the run from guys working for the rival Morello family. And if those guys can’t get their hands on their original prey, well, the guy who got them out of trouble is a good replacement target. This results in Tommy running for his life and, in a bit of good fortune, blundering right up to the bar serving as Salieri’s headquarters. Next thing you know, the goons have been run off and Tommy is being endorsed to the Don as a stand-up guy who’s better behind the wheel than anyone he has in his organization.

This leads to a number of missions showing Tommy ascending to prominence in the family under the kindly (by mob boss standards, anyway) tutelage of Salieri. He hooks up with and marries the daughter of an associate and, while on the job, works with Sam and Paulie to steal stuff, take out the trash when guys prove to be less than loyal to the boss, whack guys on the Morello payroll and eventually take on the heads of that crime family. Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta!

Except for one minor issue. While you’re playing through the 20 or so missions Mafia provides, you’ll have these occasional interludes featuring a nervous Tommy drinking coffee in a diner while telling his story to a detective in a last-ditch attempt to flip in hopes of at least protecting his family. Oh well, all good things come to an end — a statement that holds additional meaning to those who’ve also played the second game in this series.

Until you’ve reached that conclusion, you’ll mostly have the usual kinds of missions you’d expect from a GTA sort of game. You’ll drive to places and wind up shooting a bunch of enemies with a handful of different guns, often while peeking from whatever cover you can find. Some missions are pretty short and easy; others are lengthy and can become really difficult in places. There’s a radio in your car, but as might be expected for a game set in the 1920s and 30s, there isn’t exactly the greatest selection of tunes. However, there still are some neat moments that help immerse you in the game’s world. One mission is set around the local baseball team competing for a championship. While you’re driving, you’ll hear a pre-game show and, later on, the final moments of the contest.

Occasionally, the game tries something a bit different. The handful of missions involving stealth aren’t too bad, as it’s pretty easy to sneak up on a handful of guards whose routes tend to keep them separated from each other. On the other hand, the one where you have to drive a race car in a three-lap race in order to win the Don some money at Morello’s expense was a bit hellish and the race takes long enough than having to do it multiple times to finally take the checkered flag was a bit excruciating. Especially when, say, you’re leading on the final lap and make one stupid little mistake and don’t have sufficient time to make up lost ground. What? You think that happened to me? And more than once? Perish the thought!

But the worst part of the action comes from the occasional mission that ends with a good old-fashioned police chase. Those things feel like total luck-based missions where I tended to have no idea just what transpired to help me evade the long arm of the law. In the penultimate mission, for example, I failed the police chase part time after time and was getting pretty frustrated because it seemed like I couldn’t get separation from the boys in blue no matter what I tried to do. And then…in less than a minute I noticed no one was trailing me and, a few seconds later, the alert was called off and I was free to drive to the mission-closing location. With had no idea what just happened — just a sense of relief that it was over.

So, overall, I’d say this is like a less-polished GTA except for, of course, the lack of stuff to do between plot missions. I guess there is a Free Ride mode where you can roam the city and do stuff without getting restrained by the plot, but I never even touched it. Never saw a reason to. When the actual game has virtually nothing optional to do other than collect trading cards and magazines, my brain tells me to just play through the story and call it a day. Playing through Mafia: Definitive Edition made that day fun, as I’m a mob buff and Tommy’s tale was enjoyable to advance through, but when it was over, so was my time with it.

Staff review by Rob Hamilton (October 03, 2025) Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.